"I'm sorry, I don't mean to pry," you begin, but the assistant librarian just laughs and takes you by the arm.
"Don't worry," she says with a warm smile as she leads you through the winding aisles, "Many of our guests have the same question. There's a bit of a story there."
She sits you down in an ancient, but very comfortable, armchair, and sits in a similar one across from you.
A very long time ago, the First Librarian, whose name has been lost to time, lived in this city when it was barely more than a town.
The First Librarian was a young, passionate Maijal, and loved collecting knowledge of any kind — she would go to the travellers in the tavern and ask them about their travels, she would follow the courtiers as they rode to and from their palaces and ask them about the goings-on in the court of the Queen, she would even sit and listen for hours as the children told her about their games.
And diligently, dutifully, she wrote it all down.
Eventually, others took notice of her work — some, of course, dismissed her as silly, but some agreed with her that her work was valuable, and began giving her books — from witches' cookbooks to actors' scripts to poets' compilations of poetry— to keep safe for them. At first, you see, the Library was closed to all but the Librarian: she would take your book and keep it, and when you needed it, she'd have it for you. Never lose a book again! Never worry that a rival tailor would take your patterns, or that another witch would steal your recipes. Your knowledge was safe with the Librarian.
And made ever more safe by the Librarian herself, who gradually built a reputation along with her collection. She was known as an adamant woman, as unyielding as a stone wall when needed, and impossible to draw secrets from. She was excellently clever at drawing information from those around her, yet completely silent and unfathomable when the same was tried on her.
The most common saying about what happened next was that it was the Gods striking her for her pride — that they were offended that she was hoarding knowledge to herself, and they wished to teach her a lesson — but I've always thought it was the other way around. I think the Gods knew the potential of the Librarian, and they knew that sometimes for a thing to last and grow, it must be forged in fire.
Whatever the reason, one evening, the Librarian's home — the first Library — was struck by lightning in a storm and caught fire. It burned quickly, being full of paper, and by the time anybody could help, all of the Librarian's work was ashes. The Librarian escaped in time, but her home and all the written word of the town was lost.
The people were angry, and were about to turn on the Librarian, but a young Aahwa woman in ragged peasant garb stopped them.
"Don't you see?" the Aahwa said, "This has shown us the truth about the Librarian and her Library. Tell me — whose fault is it that all this knowledge is gone?"
"The Librarian!" cried the people, "She told us that she would keep it safe! She took the knowledge and hid it away!"
"No," the Aahwa replied, and swept her finger over the crowd. "The fault is ours — the Librarian held the books for us, it is true, but we hid them away. We hid them from each other." She looked to a witch. "Do you know every elixir and potion you had in your recipe book?"
The witch said "Of course not! There were far too many for just one witch to keep track of."
"But don't you see?" the Aahwa continued, "There are more witches here, more potionmakers, brewers, bakers, alchemists — if you had only let them all read from your book, and if they had let you read from theirs — not only would the knowledge have survived, but it could have grown and deepened! Who knows how much more potent the witch's healing could be if she had read the theories of the other healers? If only the bakers had shared their tricks, how much greater would their skills grow? We must rebuild the knowledge that we have, and bring it into the light — no longer should the Library be a dark, sealed room where knowledge goes to fester and die, it must be opened to the people, so that the knowledge within can spread and live forever, a living, breathing body of knowledge and wisdom, evolving and growing with every new generation! Because knowledge that's locked away in a vault isn't knowledge — it's dead words on a page. "
The people were moved by the Aahwa's words, and over the course of the coming weeks, months, and years, they helped rebuild and fill the Library again.
The Library grew much greater, with many more books than had been in the old Library, for when people work together to share knowledge, wisdom, and creativity, those great powers multiply one another to become much stronger and more fruitful. The Librarian had become much busier, and had to take on assistants to help with her work, which, of course, now included guiding visitors through the shelves to find books to read. She worked long and hard for years and years, but persisted, knowing her work was bringing knowledge into the light. In her time, she brought together thousands of people and made her home, and as much of Icosa as she could reach, a wiser, cleverer, and more creative world.
One night, the Librarian, now an old, old woman, awoke to find someone standing over her. They held no weapon and didn't give any impression of danger, so the old Maijal wasn't afraid.
"You've done well," the intruder said with a smile, sitting on the Librarian's bed. "I'm proud of you and what you have done with this Library."
"Thank you," the Librarian said. "Who are you?"
"You don't recognize me?" The newcomer leaned forward, and the Librarian saw that it was the young Aahwa woman from so long ago. Although it had been many years since the fire, the Aahwa had not aged, and looked just as she had when speaking to the crowd, in the same ragged clothing and with the same face.
Decades of dealing in wisdom had given the Librarian certain instincts, so she didn't bother with questions like "How is this possible?". Rather, she said "What would you ask of me, my lady?"
"It's not what I would ask of you, my Librarian," said the goddess, "It is what you would ask of me."
The Librarian looked around her room, filled with books but even more filled with art — from the Royal Portraitist's painting of the Librarian, leaning in the corner, to a lifetime's worth of children's drawings, carefully pinned over her bed — and said "I want for nothing. My passion is to spread the joy of knowledge, and I have done little else all my life."
The goddess, too, looked around at the illustration of a life well-loved. "Do you know what the people called you, all those years ago, before the fire? When all you did was gather knowledge and keep secrets?" She turned back to the Librarian and smiled. "They would call you the Unreadable Librarian. The Keeper of Secrets. The Wizenguard. How things have changed."
"The Unreadable Librarian," the old woman said, "I remember. But shouldn't any person be unreadable? A book you can read in an hour, a day, a week. A person should be so alive and complex that nobody else could ever fully read through all of their pages. Like this Library. If you can burn through an entire library in one lifetime, then the library isn't changing or growing. A library you can finish is a library that is dead."
There was silence in the bedroom, before the goddess said "You wish to stay here, then? To watch over these people, and this Great Library?"
The Librarian looked up at her. A smile spread across her deeply lined face. "Maybe only for a little while. Until I've finished with it."
"Then I shall stay here with you."
The goddess took the Librarian's hand, and together, they rose and walked out into the Great and Unreadable Library, a place always growing and changing, alive and breathing, with knowledge and wisdom flowing through.
Maybe only for a little while.
The Second Librarian found his predecessor's body the next morning. She had passed away in the night from old age, peacefully, a gentle, loving smile on her face.
There was mourning, as a great woman had died — but, somehow, the Second Librarian knew that she was still nearby, still reading and listening.
The assistant librarian finishes her story, and the room goes quiet.
After a few minutes, she looks up at you, stands, offers her arm once more, and, with a smile, says "Now, what are you interested in next?"